Only game will tell

Will hangover of disappointing loss be history when Irish visit Michigan?

September 08, 2011|ERIC HANSEN | Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- Gary Gray was back to playing the guitar Wednesday -- badly, even by his own grading scale.

In a twisted sort of way, that's a good sign for the Notre Dame football team as it heads into Saturday night's prime-time clash at Michigan.

This is normalcy -- the Notre Dame cornerback strumming away his stress and likely annoying everyone else within earshot. And the Irish craved normalcy this week, just not perhaps this form of it.

"I took a guitar class this summer," Gray said. "I never thought I'd say this, but it was harder than Spanish. I still can't play a real song."

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Far more perplexing were the sour notes Gray and some of the other veteran players hit Saturday in ND's 23-20 season-opening loss to South Florida.

Almost every penalty, every turnover, every obvious mental lapse, in a game determined by miscues, was courtesy of players whom ND coach Brian Kelly would have thought were largely beyond that.

"Everyone was down about the loss," Gray said, "but we have the 24-hour rule and we're past it."

The 24-hour rule stipulates that players have a day and a night to celebrate/grieve any win/loss. That doesn't mean it necessarily is executed flawlessly.

"Look, they'll have a chance for what we all can measure them by this Saturday, in other words how they come back from their disappointment from last weekend," Kelly assessed.

"Typically, during practice, you're not going to find that out until it's game time. And my expectations are -- like they did last year when they were juniors, when they bounced back -- that I expect to see their very best this Saturday."

He needs 15 receiving yards to pass Golden Tate (2,707) in that category and two 100-yard games to usurp Tate (15) in that one.

And his reaction?

"I didn't come back this year to break records," he said Wednesday. "I came back to graduate, and I saw that this team had high expectations and could do great things this year. And I never worried about the records, breaking them or anything like that. I just play the game."

Night owls

[square]ºMaybe Kelly's past success after dark explains why the Irish are 3 1/2-point favorites Saturday in the historic first night game at Michigan Stadium.

The Irish second-year coach is 55-14 in his 21-year career in night games. That's a winning percentage of .797. His overall winning percentage is .738. Kelly is 3-1 (.750) in night games while the coach at ND, with Saturday night's matchup the first of a school-record five (at least) the Irish will play this season.

[square]ºMore night numbers: Notre Dame owns an all-time mark of 60-31-2 (.656) in night games, including a 3-0 record against Michigan.

Saturday night will mark the 19th time ESPN's GameDay will appear at a site of a Notre Dame game (home or away) and the 22nd time Michigan has been on center stage since the inception of the traveling show in 1993.

Only four schools have attracted the crew more often -- Florida (32), Ohio State (29), Oklahoma (25) and Florida State (23).

The Irish, whose last appearance on GameDay was in 2006, are 8-10 in those games. Saturday night will be the fourth time an unranked ND squad lured GameDay, and the Irish are 2-1 in those games.